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This was really just an experiment in clickable maps that got away from me. If you live in any of these places, and agree with my assessment, drop me a line. If you disagree with any of my opinions, feel free to get your own web page!
When people ask me where I'm from, I answer "yes". Moving around so much has had its benefits. I have a fairly broad perspective, collected from many cities and regions. The fruits of this perspective are what this page is all about. That, and it's another opportunity to cram my opinion down someone else's throat. :)
It all started in
Toul Rosiérre en
Pérthois, France. Well, that's where I started, anyway, on 11
May, 1960. From Air Force brat, to construction worker brat, to my own
career as systems programmer/consultant (and just plain brat), I've racked
up more addresses than a poll-select line.
I was only two months old when I came to America, but I can still cry in French. Weaux! See?
Technically, I did live in New York
City but I was only four. I have three clear memories of the Big Apple.
A string of cities blur together after that. My clearest childhood memories
of Cleveland
are of asking: "How can a river catch fire? It's made of water!" Rumors
suggest they've cleaned the place up.
I spent some of my favorite years thirty miles north of
Pittsburgh. We lived in the sticks
half-way between Connoquenessing and Zelienople, Pennsylvania. You'll
notice that those cities are not links. I'll give twenty bucks to the
first person who can find a website in either city!
Likewise, you're not going to find a link to
Muscle Shoals, Alabama
here anytime soon. The link I did include will give you the general
idea. Alabama is every bad thing any Yankee has ever accused it of being.
When I became a grown-up (although some will say that they are still
waiting for that to happen), and I got to choose where I lived, the
situation improved considerably.
Madison, Wisconsin will always
hold a special place in my heart..
It is the smallest big city I have ever seen. With no major industry, and situated on an isthmus (oh, look it up), it is one of the most visually attractive cities in the world.
And if being pretentious is your thing, Madison is your Mecca. Given the city's devotion to the liberal arts, you'd never know that only 20 miles away they were milking cows. You'll also be hard-pressed to find a city with more people with Master's degrees in things like French Renaissance Poetry asking "would you like some fries with that?"
My one true home is always going to be
New Orleans. I had to
leave because of my job, but if I ever get back I'm going to nail my foot
to the floor. Even though I had to commute over the Lake Pontchartrain
Causeway Bridge (the sign says it's the world's longest at 24.1 miles),
it was well worth it.
I usually say that you can judge the heart of a city by the way it treats its eccentrics. A cold-hearted city will harass its vagrants and homeless. A friendlier city like Chicago might, as a habit, chase the bums out of the park, but only after the sun has come up.
New Orleans, on the other hand, has no eccentrics. By definition, an eccentric is someone who is different from everyone else. Crazy Mary, who roller-skates through the French Quarter wearing thirteen layers of unwashed clothes and a chrome construction helmet, is no more odd than St. Ralph, who believes that if he ever stops walking, the world will end. (I've really never seen him stand still. If he knows something I don't, we may all owe him a great debt.) Every community has a couple of peculiar characters. New Orleans seems completely comprised of them.
The climate is for the birds (tropical ones, specifically), but no one seems to mind. I'm not sure if it's because of the relaxed attitude, or the copious quantity of alcohol consumed. They have never heard of the concept of "closing time". The bars in the Quarter do not own doors. When the hurricane comes, they nail plywood over the opening. "Last call" is ten minutes before Armageddon.
I could write for days and never convey even the slightest bit of the spirit of The City That Care Forgot. (None of the locals call it "The Big Easy".) You can't find it posing as a tourist either. The city has calluses to protect itself from such irritants.
My favorite example of this is a club on Bourbon Street called Preservation Hall. A sign out front reads "Dedicated to the Preservation of Dixieland Jazz." Indeed this sentiment is heartfelt, but not in the way you would expect. This picturesque little club is dedicated to preserving Dixieland Jazz ... by keeping the tourists the hell away from it! Y'all go to this club, buy a T-shirt, listen to a mainstream band, and stay out of the real clubs.
This is not a malicious deception. Just an attempt to keep everybody happy. The club go-ers get what they want, and you get what you thought you wanted anyway. No one worries if anything is authentic, or real. No one seems to worry about anything. So come, ride the streetcar, see Mardi Gras, and enjoy the city's "date face". But be warned, New Orleans isn't a one night stand, and once you get to really know her, you'll never forget her.
I spent a brief year in the sleepy little college town of
Charlottesville,
Virginia. C'ville is a big fish in a little pond, and is as two-dimensional
as three day old seltzer. They live on misguided pretense and conceit, and
precious little of that.
A refurbished, but still dying, downtown is complemented by an ordinary shoe store laden mall where farmers drive in by the busload to gape at the modern-art. The best thing I can say about Charlottesville, is that it reminded me of Madison. The worst thing I can say about Charlottesville, is that it's full of Charlottesvilleians.
A couple of years in the nearby town of
Culpeper
did nothing to improve my opinion of Virginia. It did much, however, to
improve my opinion of Bombay. (See links to where I have worked.) The
photograph is actually of General Meade's Culpeper headquarters in 1863,
but the town hasn't changed any since then.
I was told a story about a man who moved to Culpeper from New York with his family at the age of two. He grew up, went to school, lived and worked in Culpeper his entire life. He passed away only recently at the ripe age of seventy-six. His obituary read "New Yorker dies at seventy six."
If you happen to be a minority of some sort, and Culpeper treats you like ear wax, don't take it personally. They hate everybody who isn't born into the right family or doesn't go to just the right Baptist church. On the bright side, so many people have moved in from elsewhere, that the "old guard" can just be ignored. Bigotry only works if you're a majority.
From bigotry and banjo music, to corruption and campaigning. I moved to
Washington, D.C.. You couldn't
wish for a better place to be a tourist. A year and a half, and I still
couldn't get to all the museums. The subway was clean, safe, and efficient.
The streets were dangerous, but it was clear where and when you were safe
and not. If you could avoid the smell of politics in the summer, it was a
pretty nice place to live.
I can't say anything about the city's quilted culture, because it has too many. I lived on a Korean patch of Falls Church.
Living in Washington was a lot like living in Disney World. I'll let you fill in the rest of the metaphor. (A fantasy-land with a rodent in charge, plenty of shows with all the real action underground, etc. Try it. Just about any metaphor works.)
Woe, how did I end up here in
Kansas City,
Missouri? As you approach Kansas City from
Blue Springs on
Interstate 70, all you can see is a small cluster of buildings rising
amid broken tree cover. It looks like some post-apocalyptic vision of
a deserted city as nature slowly reclaims its own. Oh, if only I had
know how accurate first impressions can be.
I had been prepared for more western influence. Nothing could have prepared me to see adult men wearing cowboy boots, standing on their apartment balcony, waving cowboy hats, and yelling yee-ha (really! yee-ha!) at passing girls. I could even accept the almost surreal cowboy influence, if they took it to heart like they do in, say, Ft. Worth. The unfortunate fact is, there's just not much going on here.
This point was driven home recently when colleagues visited from Washington. The question "what should we go see on Saturday" elicited blank stares from everyone. My friend finally announced, entreatingly, "the fountains are running on the Plaza". No, I thought, I could be in Pamplona, where the bulls might be running; I could be in Seattle, and the sock-eye salmon could be running; I could even be in Detroit, where the perp's are running; but no, I'm in Kansas City, where the fountains are running.
The Plaza is a few square downtown blocks done up in Spanish architecture. They string Christmas lights around it for the holidays, and sell postcards of it. You really have to be from Cowspittle, Iowa to think it's a tourist attraction.
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